Page 62 of Mark my Words

Sam: I’m in. Text me the location, and I’ll be there.

When I got into the office on Thursday, I was tempted to peek in Isobel’s office to see if Kristine was ready to talk to me, but Adrian already had a list of documents he’d shared that needed my attention this morning.

Adrian: You ready to dive into this one?

A message on the intraoffice chat awaited me when I booted up my computer at my small desk in the corner of Adrian’s office. He wasn’t anywhere to be found, but he’d been logged into his laptop at 7:00 am. I was a little nervous about the final draft of Evan and Chase’s new manuscript, but if Adrian and Isobel were both excited about it, it was bound to be a success. Sloane was looking at promoting candidates with solid, well-rounded portfolios, which could give Kristine and me the edge against some of the others.

After combing through the first few chapters to ensure the new edits they’d made flowed well, I pulled open the chat on my laptop and looked to see if I could get Kristine to talk to me. When I got to her name, it showed her offline, which was weird because it was already after 10:00 am. I tried sending her a message, but it bounced back with an out-of-office reply.

Samuel Langley: Hey, you up for comparing notes on the final draft? You haven’t left any comments yet.

Kristine Willard: I’m not in the office today. If you need to contact me for something time-sensitive, please send me an email, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

The little green light was lit next to Isobel’s name, so I shoved my tablet into my bag and set off toward her office. Slowing down as I reached the doorway, I listened to see if anyone was talking. I’d interrupted Isobel and Adrian’s little mating dance a few times over the last several weeks, and I didn’t want today to be the day I walked in on them doing something I couldn’t unsee.

“Isobel?” My hand reached across the doorframe and knocked, ensuring she was alone.

“Hey, Sam,” she smiled as I peeked around the frame and saw her seated, thankfully alone, at her desk. “What can I do for you?”

Not wanting to sound desperately needy, I went in with the manuscript angle, not immediately asking why the table in her office was empty, and Kristine was nowhere to be found.

“I saw the final draft of the manuscript had editing permissions for both Kristine and me. I wanted to ensure it was alright to start verifying the original edits and proofreading without her. Does that work for you?” There, that sounded like a legitimate reason to ask her a question. I could have done it by email or chat, but then I couldn’t subtly figure out why Kristine wasn’t in the office.

“It does, I scanned through the document, and it looked like they revised everything important, but they’ll appreciate it if you and Kristine go over it with a fine-toothed comb before we send it to be formatted.”

“Do you know if Kristine has looked it over yet?”

Isobel smiled, closing the lid of her laptop and swiveling back and forth in her chair. “She’s on a little vacation for the next few days. I told her she needed to take a break and recharge. Hopefully, she’ll come back next week a little more relaxed.”

“She’s gone?” God, Sam, could you sound any more desperate?

“Kristine assured me she has her laptop and tablet with her, but I told IT to restrict her permissions to the shared server until Friday. She’s been a little stressed about everything lately, and I need her fresh if you two are going to manage the book tour.”

“I thought Chase and Evan hadn’t agreed to anything yet.”

“They haven’t, but they’ll both be in the office next Thursday, so we have until then to devise a strategy to convince them. It’s in everyone’s best interests to maximize the publicity on this project,” she answered with a smile. “And Sloane is counting on you and Kristine to prove you can handle more responsibility. None of the other candidates are being given this opportunity, so you need to be ready to hit the ground running on this one.”

“Alright, sounds good.” I’m sure Kristine would be dragged out of the office kicking and screaming, but this was a once-in-a-career opportunity to show we could handle it, or neither of us would get that promotion. “Let Kristine know I should have my notes put in by Friday if she wants to get a hold of me to discuss edits.”

“I’m sure she knows how to get in touch with you by now, Sam,” she smirked, and I tried not to fidget as I thought about all the ways Kristine had touched me over the last several months. Dwelling on our previous arrangement would not help me figure out how to get her to talk to me.

Even though I was productive—Adrian only made a few appearances in his office throughout the day on Thursday and Friday—I still felt like I should have been doing more to contact Kristine. She’d been completely silent, both in a professional sense and a personal one. Isobel would probably fill me in if she heard something of importance, but I found myself opening new texts to her, pouring my heart out, and then deleting them before I got the courage to hit send. I missed her, but I wasn’t sure what to say to her to keep her from shutting me out for good.

My sisters would probably have good advice on what I should do, but I couldn’t bring myself to reach out to any of them. My mother would just harass me about when I was bringing Kristine home with me and the arrival of the wedding invitation I knew was coming. I was surprised she wasn’t already blowing up my phone with constant questions about who I would bring as a plus one.

It was still several months away—well after we were scheduled to return from the book tour—if we could get Chase and Evan on board, that was way too far out for me to even consider asking Kristine. She already had one foot out the door, and since she may not even be talking to me by then once the promotions were announced, I was leaning toward going alone.

“Hey, man.” Blake smiled as I approached him on the sidewalk outside the field house we were allowed to use for our league play. It was a little way outside the city, but I could walk to a T-station from the office and take the subway a few blocks from the stadium. Adrian had made fun of me for bringing all my gear to work today, but I wouldn’t have time to go home and get outside the city in time to make the game.

“What’s up, B?” I slapped his outstretched hand and pulled him in for a hug, regretting not making more effort to be present for more games. When I’d first moved to the city after graduation, I was a regular on the roster, but they’d put me in as an alternate with my busy work schedule. I typically picked up a few games a season, but I missed the team’s camaraderie from when I was more active. “Who are we playing?”

“Rockets,” he cringed. Most of our team was either old high school or university players who’d moved to the city for work and wanted to try to hold onto the sport they loved. The Rockets had four former U.S. Lacrosse athletes, two of whom had been on previous Olympic teams. They typically scouted from the local universities and pulled in seniors each year to round out their line-up.

With the four semi-pros being older than Blake and me, you’d think they’d have slowed down with age, but they were brutal, taking the tournament championship for the last four consecutive years. For a millisecond, I’d considered their offer to join their team in my second year in the league, but they wanted too much of a time commitment. I’d left early morning daily team sports conditioning behind when I’d graduated from Duke, and I wasn’t trying to relive the glory days. I just wanted some guys my age to hang out with and go to the bars with me when I’d still been into drinking away my weekends.

“Long time no see, Langley. How’s corporate life treating you?”

“I’m a book editor, B. It’s hardly corporate life. I spend most of my day correcting grammatical errors and working on plot development.”

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